Advertisement
Published: August 13th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Bell Tower
This bell tower sits right in the middle of the city, more beautiful at night. Back to Xi'an Hello, from the capital city of Xi'an, in Northwest, China. We have left the surly city of Zhengzhou and are spending a few days here in one of our favorite places to stay in Xi'an; the
HQ Guesthouse, owned by our friends Todd and Mei. We are in back in Xi'an to receive our final paperwork from our Tibet tour company before hopping on our first flight inside China since landing in Shanghai almost seven months ago, headed to Tibet.
Up to this point in our adventure we have been traveling in the Eastern provinces and are now headed towards the West but the people, the city, the traffic, the overall look and feel of China remains the same. We do notice that Xi'an obviously has more money being funneled into the city and this is confirmed by Todd and Mei as they tell us about the ongoing construction of what will be China's largest subway system in the country. Xi'an is booming! But, even ongoing construction is commonplace in China and Jenny and I laugh because so much of this country's cities are almost identical; the only difference being the attractions they each boast to lure
HQ Guesthouse
Todd and Mei run a great place including games like Chinese chess, free internet, etc. Check them out if you are ever in Xi'an! in tourists, mainly Chinese.
Yes, the food is one thing that is highly advertised to be different here, but you have to have a good understanding of not only the local cuisine, but the national cuisines, the restaurants/shacks/street vendor options, and also the language before you can unearth tasty local delicacies so often hyped on travel sites, blogs, and national media. Yes, they use a lot of red peppers here in the West, but we see mostly the same food options as back home in Eastern, China, in our town of DanYang. The highlight of our short visit with Todd and Mei turns out to be a delicious lunch at a popular steak joint where we enjoyed our fillets of grass-fed beef (two for 23yuan = $3.25) cooked to order on a huge grill in front of us all, Teppanyaki style.
As we wait for our flight out on the 3rd, we enjoy the sites of Xi'an, pack and repack, and I happen to stumble on my first taste of what will soon become my favorite meal in my life - Yak. More on that later...
It's the Journey, Not the Destination Before we fly into
Yak jerky...
Found a package of Yak jerky, our first, and it is delicious - they say it is one of only three unpolluted animals left on the planet - polar bears, penguins, and yak. Yum!! Lhasa and start up with our tour, I want to explain that traveling to Tibet is difficult these days as everyone who knows anything about China is aware, so I will quickly summarize to give you an idea of the logistics and why we are flying into Lhasa instead of taking the infamous
Qinghai-Tibet Railway to the rooftop of the world.
Tibet travel is highly restricted and individuals (foreigners) are not allowed to come to Tibet and simply walk around and see the country by yourself. All access to Tibet is controlled by the Chinese government who has mandated that anyone who wants to visit Tibet must use a tour guide company.
Yes, many people will tell you, and I'm sure I will get some blog comments on this, that there are ways around this, backpacking/trekking in alone, purchasing permits through agencies in Chengdu, etc., but we are in no position to attempt to even consider circumventing these restrictions because we don't mind playing by the rules as long as we know what the rules are... These Tibet travel companies, and there are hundreds if not thousands of them, are authorized by China to confirm passport visas, obtain
Tibet Permit...
This is the permit required to enter Tibet regardless of how you are getting there... the necessary permits to travel into Tibet (there were five people traveling under our one permit, for example), and they are ultimately responsible for controlling all movements of the tourists while in the country, and they also confirm that the visitors are leaving on a specific day and time and they are responsible for ensuring this exit. This is how access and travel inside Tibet is controlled, from the time you are greeted to the time they pack you on the train or plane out.
It is also why getting to Tibet is ridiculously expensive. Foreigners have to pay a travel company and buy a "package tour" and of course there are a minimum number of days, etc. By the way, the irony in this situation is that most, if not all, of the money paid to these companies by tourists such as myself and Jenn goes to the Chinese, not the people of Tibet. However, we want to see Tibet for ourselves so we picked a company with an excellent reputation (not accurate it turns out), sent the entire sum to them as a deposit ($$$), and were looking forward to taking the three day train ride into
China Eastern...
Our flight attendant on China Eastern, we flew on the A319 aircraft and left a little late from our 12:40 departure time... Tibet.
As it turns out, there is a high demand to go to Tibet on the Qinghai Railway, so high that we are not able to purchase these train tickets and the tour company can not confirm they can buy some tickets either. There are agencies who say they can
try to get us on the train but they can not guarantee it, and want us to send the money anyway. However, we are not taking the chance on not arriving in Lhasa for our tour on the 3rd since we have paid the entire fee upfront so we are forced to pay for the more dependable mode of transportation - flying into Tibet. We are resigned to take the infamous Qinghai Railway from Lhasa back to Chengdu, and not the other way around. It's not perfect, but it's a plan.
We packed all of our stuff up, said goodbye to Todd and Mei and wished them well on their upcoming baby!, walked a few blocks in the pouring rain to a local hotel, hopped on a shuttle to the Xi'an International airport (30yuan each = $3.50), found the other three people in our tour group, had a light breakfast and chatted with our new friends in an airport cafe, checked in, and took off from Xi'an headed to Lhasa a bit late from our scheduled departure of 12:40. We are more excited than I can describe...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0415s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb